management alpha 10 Minute Guide to Project Management PHẦN 8 pps

Choosing Project Management Software In this lesson, you learn the kinds of software that are available, the capabilities of software, which software functions are crucial, and guideline

No one likes to read a report filled with fluff, and no one likes to be deceived Stay on the up and

up and develop your reputation as a project manager of integrity

The 30-Second Recap

of those to whom you must report

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send over look magnificent

Be entirely honest when it comes to addressing your own performance

Lesson 10 Choosing Project Management

Software

In this lesson, you learn the kinds of software that are available, the capabilities of software, which software functions are crucial, and guidelines for selection

With the Click of a Mouse

Project management software today is available at a variety of prices, offering a wide variety of functions You can use software to plan, initiate, track, and monitor your progress You can

develop reports, print individual charts, and at the push of a button (or a click of a mouse) e-mail virtually any aspect of your project plans to any team member, top manager, executive, or

stakeholder

Whereas earlier versions of PM software focused on planning, scheduling and results, tools for analyzing your progress, finding critical paths, and asking "what if" questions were lacking.

CAUTION

Today, there are so many options in and among so many vendors that the problem

is finding your way through the bewildering choices

Bennett Lientz and Kathryn Rea in Project Management for the 21st Century observe that project

management software has at least five distinct differences from more widely known and used word processing, database, and spreadsheet software:

see the generated output

software

Leave a Good Thing Alone

Project management software went from being expensive and crude, to less expensive and highly functional, to even less expensive, but confusing When Harvard Project Manager was launched in

1983 it represented a breakthrough in PM software Its main focus was on project budgeting, scheduling, and resource management With Harvard Project Manager you were able to generate Gantt charts, PERT/CPM charts, and a variety of other charts and tables It was considered an integrated project planning and control package and sold for as little as 30 percent of the price of its clunky, less functional predecessors

In the two decades that followed, competition among PM software vendors heated up, prices came down, and functionality went sky high Many packages now are harder to learn and use Consider your own experience in using word processing, database, or spreadsheet software Aren't there earlier versions of current programs that were easier and more convenient? You were able to pop them in, learn them in a day or so, and go on your merry way

Today, with expanding megabyte counts, it seems that the vendors need to have everything plus the kitchen sink This gives them the opportunity to design splashy ads listing umpteen features Realistically, how many people are true power users who would use all of the advertised features?

CAUTION

Whereas the Harvard Project Manager could be learned in as little as a day if you

were diligent, current PM software can take as much as five days of your time, if

you are starting from square one and have no PC guru or mentor nearby to steer

you along

Whose Choice Is It?

Certainly, if your organization, department or division already uses or prefers a certain type of software, then your decision is already made Your quest becomes mastering that software—or at least the parts of it that are crucial for you to know

TIP

If a brand of PM software is the preferred choice in your workplace, and other

projects employ such software, you are relatively fortunate Other project

managers or staff will know how to use it and can serve as ad-hoc software gurus

to you

With no experienced users in your work setting, some important questions arise:

In choosing PM software a rule of thumb is to choose a popular and very well-known

package The price is likely to be highly competitive, people around you would have either heard of the vendor or have heard that the software is widely known, and you won't have to spend a lot of time defending your decision!

If you and you alone will have responsibility for learning the software, you need to build time and expense into your budget—it will take you time to learn it or to take a course, and your time has a cost

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The Project Management Institute at http://www.pmi.org/ and the Project

Management Control Tower at http://www.4pm.com/ each offer a wide variety

of books, audio-visual materials, training guides, classroom training, seminars, and

increasingly, online training Also, PMFORUM at

http://www.projectmanager.com/ offers a host of career opportunities for

project managers or those seeking to enter the profession

While it may seem obvious that you as the project manager should be the primary user of PM software, you may need to rethink that assumption Depending on what you are managing and the dynamics of your organization, if you were to be the primary software user, you might spend the brunt of your time working with the software and have precious little time left for forming and

building your team, maintaining reporting requirements, and offering the overall kind of day-to-day project management that the venture requires

Recognizing the danger of having a project manager become too immersed with project

management software, some organizations have established support groups or provide internal software gurus These gurus are the in-house experts and are often loaned to project

management teams for the duration of the project

The gurus work directly with the project manager, incorporating his feedback, answering his

questions, and undertaking whatever types of analysis the project manager requests They

routinely maintain schedules, budget reports, and track the allocation of resources An

experienced software guru knows how and how often to share project related reports with project staff and project stakeholders in general

What's Your Pleasure?

Assuming that you're not in the position where your organization will loan someone to you who will handle the brunt of PM software activities and assuming that there is no particular program of choice yet established, how do you go about selecting software?

First, establish what kind of user you're going to be, which is largely determined by two elements: the size of your project and how technical you are

For tiny projects of zero to two staff for a project of a few months or less, it's possible that no project management software is necessary! How so? You may already possess all the software and software knowledge you need to be effective in managing a small project We're talking about spreadsheets, word processing, a graphics or drawing program, and the functionality to generate tables, graphs, flow charts, and other diagrams

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Though somewhat makeshift, the combination of reports and exhibits that you can

muster with your current software and skills might be more than adequate for your

project needs

Your current software may be entirely adequate if the basic work breakdown structure (WBS) and

a Gantt chart or two is all you need, and you don't necessarily have to create a critical path

For projects involving four or more people, extending several months or longer, with a variety of critical resources, it makes sense to invest in some type of software Again, it doesn't necessarily need to be PM software per se Many calendar and scheduling software programs come with

built-in functions You can produce tables, Gantt charts, and even mabuilt-intabuilt-in a schedule for four to ten people Increasingly, you can do this on hand-held computers

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With a total project management team of four people, extended over several

months, employing dedicated PM software may make the most sense

Dedicated PM Software

The competition among dedicated PM software vendors is keen Major vendors in the field include PlanView, Inc., Primavera, Microsoft, Dekker Welcome, and Artemus (An overview of PM

software with descriptions can be found in the next lesson.) There are also lower-end programs that will help you generate plans, project reports, and basic charts that don't require as much learning time Products such as Quick Gantt, Milestone Simplicity, and Project Vision sell for less than $100 and are available at office superstores as well as retail software stores

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Inexpensive PM software may be your best option if you don't have anyone else in

the organization who can serve as guru, but you do wish to automate, rather than

manually generate critical reports and charts.

Suppose that you are managing many people over many months, and have a thousand or more tasks and subtasks to complete Here, you would look at PM software for midrange project

managers You can spend anywhere from $200 to $6,000 using the more feature-laden versions

of software named above Most packages will give you the full range of tools sought by even veteran project managers on multiyear projects

The problem with software at this level is that you can quickly become a slave to it For example, will you decide to schedule and track all subtasks and tasks based on identified start times, stop times, for each staff member, all the time? Or, will you continually rely on your staff to give you estimates of tasks and subtask completion times?

PC screen more often—away from the people and the events happening all around you

High-end project management software is designed for the very largest, longest duration, most involved types of projects If you are a high-end user, you wouldn't have picked up this book Here,

we are talking about software that can range from a few thousand to several thousand dollars Learning such packages could take weeks The software selection process alone could take

weeks or months

CAUTION

Even if at the high end there are so many programs available, made by such

vendors as Cobra, Semantic, Instaplan, Klavis (for Mac users), Open Plan,

Primavera, Microsoft, Enterprise PM, Microplanner, and others, that you would

need a consultant to make such a selection

Regardless of your level of PM software knowledge, your selection could be one of the most

important factors in overall project success Many project managers have found that the software

in force is too complex and too unwieldy to use for the entire project Some end up using only an element of the software, such as budgeting or scheduling; some use it only for making charts; others end up abandoning the software midstream Undoubtedly, a whole lot of scrambling follows because whatever the software was used for now needs to be done manually

How Will You Use PM Software?

The first time, modest users obviously won't use PM software the way that an experienced pro will Nevertheless, there are levels of usage worth differentiating:

● Reporting

Here the project manager uses the software to generate Gantt or, possibly, PERT/CPM charts She may use other software programs such as word processing and spreadsheets

to supplement her project graphs and produce reports

The software is used to compare actual versus planned progress As the project staff completes tasks and subtasks, the results of their efforts are logged so that the tracking effort stays current

Plain English

Project tracking

A system for identifying and documenting progress performance for effective

review and dissemination to others

● What-if

The PM software is engaged to identify the impact of shuffling resources, changing the order of subtasks, or changing tasks' dependencies What-if analysis is kind of fun,

because you get immediate feedback

CAUTION

Change one variable at a time to have a full grasp of its impact If you change too

many variables at once, the picture becomes cloudy

Project managers use PM software to allocate costs to various project resources This is usually done by figuring out how much resource time and effort is consumed Lientz and Rea observe that "most project management software systems lack flexibility in handling costs as well as interfaces into budgeting and accounting systems." Thus, the cost

computations that a project manager makes generally don't plug into the overall cost structures the accountants in her organization work with

By adding project team member hours expended on various tasks and subtasks on a

regular basis, project managers can then generate reports showing actual versus

scheduled use of resources

Checklists and Choices

It's hard to generalize what type of software various levels of users may require, but here are some general criteria worth considering:

Is the software easy to plug in, are there good help screens, is there a tutorial, is there strong customer support, and is the software menu driven and intuitive? Is it easy to move things around, are the commands as standard as possible and easy to learn? Is there an accompanying manual that is easy to read? Are you able to get started on some functions quickly?

Does the program allow for individual revising of report formats, can these be easily

imported into other software programs, and can they easily be saved, added to, combined, and read?

Does the software offer the basic project management charts (virtually all do), is there automatic recalculation, are there easy-to-use options, and are there drag and drop

capabilities? Can charts be imported and exported easily, are supporting graphics easy to see and to use, and can charts readily be changed into other forms?

Does this software allow for calendars of all durations, in a variety of formats, for different aspects of the project and project staff, with the ability to mark particular days and times, with holidays and other nonworking days preprogrammed, and are these calendars also easily importable and exportable?

Can you easily connect with telecommunication systems and is information easily shared with others who require online access? Is it efficient in terms of byte space consumed?

Can a variety of report formats be selected, with quick changing capabilities, and easy

transference to word processing software?

In addition, consider these attributes:

Most of the vendors you will encounter have such capabilities Hence, you need to go beyond a strict comparison of software functionality and consider the attributes, benefits, and services of using a particular vendor as well In fact, for any major purchase it's advisable to have a good set

of questions The following is a list adapted from my book The Complete Idiot's Guide to Managing Stress Ask the vendors whether they

● Avoid selling, renting, or otherwise using your name and ordering information?

Making a List, Checking It Twice

After you've established your own set of selection criteria in consideration of all the things that your project entails and in consideration of the various attributes, benefits and features of working with

each vendor, engage in a useful exercise: Decide on paper what you must have versus what it is nice to have versus what is not needed, but you will take it if it is offered

Then, using articles, product reviews, and the vendors' Web sites, make a preliminary survey of the various packages available and how they stack up A simple matrix or grid with the vendors listed across the top representing columns, and the important attributes to you down the left side of the page will suffice

CAUTION

Selection processes can be brutal You may encounter ten or twelve possible

vendors, but try to knock down the list early to three to five Sometimes, a

particular feature is so outstanding that it outweighs other mediocre elements of a

vendor's overall package